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The maths student on the front line fighting Isis

Last month Kimberley Taylor made the headlines: she is the first British woman to join a female militia in Syria

Monique Rivalland

March 25 2017, 12:01am, The Times

Left: Kimberley Taylor, who has now joined the YPJ, pictured in Sweden in 2015. Right: a YPJ soldier photographed by Newsha TavakolianCourtesy of Kimberley Taylor, Magnum/Newsha Tavakolian

On paper, Kimberley Taylor and I are not so different. We are both white, British, university-educated women born in the late Eighties. And yet, when we speak via Skype one Friday afternoon in March, we could not inhabit more disparate worlds. I am in my office, overlooking the skyscrapers of the City of London; Kimmie, as friends call her, is in northern Syria, in a small village outside Raqqa that lies just north of the Euphrates and a few miles from Islamic State’s front line. Taylor is smiley and has an open, pretty face. Her light brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail; she wears black-rimmed glasses, combats and carries a Kalashnikov.

“I’m in a mansion,” says Taylor, 27, in a soft Lancashire twang,…

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